


Abbadon

by Rococospade



Series: Fireballs and Fairydust [2]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Genre: Alternate Universe - Urban Fantasy, Backstory, Gen, Male Sheik, Mild Horror, Multiple Religion & Lore Sources, Sheik is a Separate Character, The Underworld, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-27
Updated: 2019-02-02
Packaged: 2019-10-21 05:58:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17637134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rococospade/pseuds/Rococospade
Summary: Five minutes before the end of her shift, Viilinn gets a call out to Old Kakariko. She goes out expecting to chase some kids out of the ruins, and discovers something considerably worse lurking in the catacombs.





	Abbadon

**Author's Note:**

> No archive warnings, but please proceed with caution if grief/mourning/mortality are triggers at current. This chapter isn't very happy.  
> Multiple real life religions are drawn on for the sheikah religion in this story including names of locations/deities. These should not be taken as accurate to the real life religions/beliefs and I encourage curious readers to do their own research rather than take anything from this story as factual or accurate.  
> This story names the parents of the Links and tries to flesh out a family for them, so there are considerable indulgences made with characterization as well as several OCs.  
> If you're not up for a story with these elements, or with disturbing/horror elements, that is totally okay and give it a pass. This is mostly backstory/world-building for the Fireballs and Fairydust 'verse.

Five minutes before the end of her shift, Viilinn’s work phone rang. 

She answered the call with a clipped voice and short sentences, automatic in her responses, with her focus on what she’d heard and what it could mean. When she hung up it was with a distinct sour expression, the sort one only wore with really unpleasant (but not really unanticipated) news. 

Viilinn looked up to company. Amin was leaning in the doorway with a wry smile, mask off. Viilinn supposed that meant everyone else had gone home for the evening – it was late, and she had paperwork slaving her to the desk or she’d have left with her call phone already.  

“Something come up at home?” Amin asked, something approaching sympathy in her voice; Viilinn’s husband was off shift, but that meant he was chasing their brood around, and with four of them someone was nearly always sick with _something_.  

“No. I'll be canceling.” Viilinn stood from the desk and grabbed her badge and gun, then her jacket – she pulled it on and looked to Amin with an unfortunately business-like expression. “Heading out to old Kakariko.” 

Amin’s brows knitted: Old Kakariko meant monsters, sink holes and sometimes fires. She straightened up and gave herself a pat down to check that she had everything she might need. “What for?” Gun, tactical knife, badge, wallet, restraints... 

“Couple of people spotted entering the catacombs.” Viilinn curled her lip and shrugged a shoulder, as if to say in a gesture, _fucking tourists or bored teenagers, hell if I know why they’re doing it. “_ At least three. Might be more.” She went to shut the office window the same as if they were closing up and going home for the day. “It's probably kids, but you never know.” 

After saying that, Viilinn pulled out her flip-phone and dialed the oldest number she'd memorized. Amin eyed it like she’d whipped out a dinosaur, which – okay, fair, but it was durable and cheap to replace.  

Viilinn chewed her lip until someone picked up, hesitating on the pull-cord at the window, peering out at the encroaching dusk with a racing mind. Fall meant early nights and people doing dumb shit, meant explaining to her family she’d be late for dinner, meant chasing teenagers away from places they didn’t realize were dangerous. She sort of missed thinking she was invincible, even if it was a damn stupid thought.  

“Hello?” A boy’s voice answered – well, hell, a girl’s at the start and a man’s at the end. Poor kid. 

Viilinn managed to smile a little. “Vio, sweetheart,” She balanced the phone on her shoulder and made herself shut the blinds, “Is your father there?”  

Some shuffling on the other end. Amin gestured at her until Viilinn caught on that she’d left her clutch on the desk. She grabbed it with a brief scowl, as if it were the clutch’s fault Amin had had to remind her it existed and she probably shouldn’t leave it at work overnight.    

Vio’s voice came through, soft and hesitant – probably hoping it wouldn’t break again. _Good luck there, kid._ “He's helping Blue clean… what is it?” She could picture him leaning against the table in the hallway, peering into the living room to spy on the cleaning without getting dragged in himself. Blue was bossy and Vio was almost painfully independent. They mixed like oil and water.  

Viilinn’s eyes flickered to Amin, who jangled the keys for the squad car at her. “I've got to run out to Kakariko.” She told Vio while pulling on her jacket. Late in October the nights got cold fast. She figured that was probably what they were heading out for. Around All Hallows, people liked to hang around the ruins for the spirit of it. Viilinn couldn’t really bring herself to approve; it was dangerous, and it was now her job to shoo people away from pursuits like that. Probably she should’ve picked a career that involved less people time, but she couldn’t imagine one all the same.  

Vio did not sound impressed with her. His voice came out scratchy and impatient. “Now...?”  

Viilinn strode for the door, where Amin was bouncing from foot to foot with her keys in her hand. “Now. Take the phone in and put me on speaker please?” 

Some shuffling. A sort of dejected sigh, though it sounded like he'd tried to muffle it. “Okay, mom.” 

Viilinn balanced her phone between her shoulder and ear to have free hands and locked the office door with a smile. “Thank you.” 

The phone crackled and the voices warped. She could hear more background noise – Blue ordering Aldhard to lift the couch higher, Red asking Green questions about ‘the classics’. Viilinn spent a short, mystifying moment trying to remember what the hell she’d even read in school. Probably a good thing she wasn’t the parent at home, then. Aldhard had always been better at that.    

“Mom’s on the phone.” Vio’s voice announced. The noise stopped, and then a chorus of hellos sounded off to replace it. 

Viilinn climbed in and shut the passenger side door. Amin turned the keys in the ignition and the car hummed to life.  

AgainViilinnsmiled to herself, a little apology her family couldn’t see through the line. “Hey. Sorry, boys, gotta cancel tonight.” 

A chorus of complaints met her words; Green sounded particularly wounded. “But Blue’s been working us like slaves!” Viilinn’s brow creased. Why... Ah. Right, any excuse to clean the house. Make that a bossy neatfreak.  

“Sorry.” Her smile turned a little sour. “We got a call. Can't wait. We'll be home late, alright? Tell Impa and the others not to wait up.” 

“Miss Amin’s going too?” That sounded like Red. Mostly because it sounded entirely like a girl – puberty hadn't yet caught him.  

Viilinn chuckled. “Of course, sweetheart. You know she doesn't trust me anywhere by myself.”  

♠♠♠

Darkness stretched on all sides of her. Overhead drafts hissed, gentle and sibilant. On the furthest edges of her attention were the faint echoes of water, droplets into puddles, reverberating in the narrow confines of a cave. It was warm in the abyss, and strangely absent of life. Not even the stirring of a keese wing could be heard.  

Her eye didn't take long to adjust to the stygian gloom, and she recognized that she was in a cavern – albeit one far from where she'd been last. What had happened? An awful crack, knocking like kobolds – and a stinging pain in her head and shoulders that was gone now. The absence of it chilled her. 

Viilinn pushed herself to her feet and looked around. Her head didn’t hurt, but she had the thought that it should as she looked around.  

It was a strangely open cave, more like a sinkhole with stone over it than a proper hole in the earth. It reminded her of something from the videogames the kids played. Careful of the ground under her – worn smooth from age and probably water – she began to walk. 

She was sure she walked for hours.  

 _Crack,_ followed by shuffling noises from the dark in her wake. She stopped walking and looked back – the noise stopped - there was nothing. Ahead of her, where she'd been preparing to step, she heard the earth crumble.  

She stepped back and looked ahead of her again – the stone had given way. It trailed down into dark like the ground was yawning.  

“Farore guide me.” Viilinn mumbled, creasing her brow. She turned to walk beside the fissure, though with a healthy distance between her boots and the empty void. 

Her clothes felt different than what she'd been wearing on the call to the crypt. Her blouse was gone – a wool-spun tunic draped her in its place, heavy and hot and miserable. Her jeans were gone too – she was certain she was wearing tights, for probably the first time in her life. One of them was torn, maybe from when she’d fallen in the first place: it was a long way down from the surface. 

Viilinn made a silent vow to find whoever had changed her clothes and beat them for it. Probably she should also seek out her badge, but for now it was the least of her worries. 

Her shoes weren't even the same, when she examined them! It looked like someone had traded her black combats for some renfaire riding crap with matching - useless - gloves. She flexed her hand with a scowl: they didn't even have _fingers._  

The cavern had a different shape than when she'd started walking. The stone had strange dips and shadows, like alcoves cut into temple walls.  

Some of them housed rough cut statues catching the scarce stygian light. 

She wasn't really sure where it was coming from. Probably ambient, but should that reach so far down without her seeing any source near the ceiling? Or anywhere... Probably not. It was possible this was a fever dream, Viilinn reflected; either way she had nothing to do but walk. 

In the distance a hazy light began to resolve itself into a lantern’s form. It seemed to flicker into existence when she came near enough – but before she could denounce this as madness, she watched one-two-three more sputter into life around it. They glowed green, blue, violet and red.  

She tried not to let the colors unsettle her.

The lanterns were perched on a small bridge stretched between the broken cliffs. It arched neatly in the center, like something she’d seen in fancier gardens. 

It looked as if it were carved from the same stone as the floor beneath her, worn to the smoothness of polished marble. The corners were sharp and new as if it had been carved in the hour. 

The lanterns were stone-hewn and carved into the bridge’s railing, with hieroglyphs cut into the panes that caged the flames. Even if she could have understood the text – old hylian, long disused and now the territory of academia and enthusiasts alone – the light made it uncomfortable to try. She traced the outlines of a word she recognized from lessons almost twenty years in her past, the clearest bit she could see. “Apollyon, huh?” It took her a while to place WHY she remembered, though. Apollyon was a place in the afterlife – it was where death came from and where it returned, the heart of Sheol.  

The empty darkness seemed more forbidding now that it was held in comparison to the underworld. But there were no ghosts here, surely, and no listless shades. It was just old Kakariko; she must have fallen deeper into the caverns when they'd caved in.  

Only... when had they caved in? 

Viilinn paused, fingers twitching on the stone. Had they? Had she misremembered?

“ _Go, go, go!” The ground had trembled, rocked, the knocking like kobolds sending up a warning to miners long gone, the world giving out, a flash of pain in the back of her head, something warm and wet, something else_ **crunched** , _and then the floor fell out from under her heels and she went down down_ _**down**_ **-**  

Her head ached with phantom pain and with the effort of trying to wrap around an evening she remembered in bits and pieces, like she’d drunk too much, like trying to catch smoke in a bottle. For a moment she could feel blood slicking down her neck and caking her hair, but when she touched the back of her neck it was dry on her fingers.  

Old Kakariko continued for miles underground, rotten tunnels crisscrossing over dozens, maybe hundreds of half-destroyed places. She hadn't found any bonesyet, but they could be concealed by the pervasive dark. A good portion of the old city had been built with them incorporated into the masonry. 

It tended to disturb hylians who hadn't grown up somewhere cosmopolitan. Viilinn had spent her life between Lanayru’s coastal deserts and the marshland southwest of the lost woods. Death was a part of the culture in both the desert and the secret dark places of the swamps. 

(As for the excess of bones, many sheikah requested that their bones be sent to Kakariko when they died, even if they’d never set foot there in life. This went also for hylians who wished to be interred near the royalty of the country, back when it was a monarchy, and well... The story went that the priests had run out of room, and begun looking for creative uses for the bones instead of leaving them to lie about like a charnel house. It worked, in some manner of thinking. In others – well. There were rumors of death cults that persisted even today.) 

Central Hyrule seemed more prone to shying from it than Viilinn’s home towns, but the people of Psamathe were brutally practical and Bremen was wildly superstitious. 

Then there were the sheikah. Viilinnwould love to ask what made a people use the bones of the dead to build their city,but there weren’t enough around to remember. She didn’t really believe the story Aminhadfed her about it, though she could recite it on command. Over time too much tragedy had stalked the sheikahpeople,and so they were stuck with myths and stories. Impatended to point atthe numerous crusades and genocides as a probable cause for the destruction of so much historyin particular. And, well. It was very hard to argue with Impa. 

Viilinn crossed her arms and regarded the bridge. It continued to stand firm, and seemed unlikely to collapse into the abyss if she stood on it. But it made her uncomfortable anyway. One of those stories she'd grown up hearing was the weight of someone’s sins determined the breadth of the bridge afforded to them in the afterlife. And she wasn't superstitious, but – lanterns colored after her children’s names. Carved with the name of the power presiding over Sheol, the empty darkness of the otherworld. 

It just seemed sensible to display a LITTLE caution, okay? 

She touched the bridge – a great noise started up from the gap in the earth, sibilant hisses and murmurs issuing from the deep like the Lovecraftian horrors in one of Vio’s weird books. Viilinnjerked her hand back and jumped away, eyes wide, reaching for a gun she didn't have. The noise petered out from whispers and moans to a soft, forlorn little sigh the wind made to carry off.

The lanterns continued to crackle with their strange lights. She looked into them – glassless old candle lamps without any candles inside.

There were footsteps past the bridge - Viilinn looked up. 

Red eyes stared back at her. There was a flash of blond hair as the sheikah tossed his head and flashed her a toothy smile. Her first thought was that it looked like Amin. 

Amin had never worn clothes like that, though; black and fitted like an acrobat’s costume. She didn't carry trailing red feathers on her belt. And she didn't have The Eye or anything like it embellished over the front of anything she owned (though she did have it across her forehead and nose, and maybe that’s where Viilinn was drawing the resemblance from). 

She also wasn't a man, as the sheikah basking in red-violet light appeared to be. It... must have been her son, though for the life of her Viilinn couldn’t fathom what he would be doing down there right then, or ever. 

“Sheik?” Viilinn called, knitting her brow. This wasn't any place for a kid, didn’t he know better? Surely he wasn't abusing his license to drive out to necropolises? He was supposed to be the smart child! “What are you doing down here?” 

Sheik laced his hands behind his head and bounced on the balls of his feet, looking down at the bridge pointedly before he tipped his head back again. He smiled at her the way he smiled before doing something he wasn't supposed to – usually atop a building or standing in the ice rink.  

Then he turned on the ball of his foot and hared off into the darkness like death chased on his heels. 

Viilinn’seyes widened. She shouted after him and, with no further regard for the bridge, took off across it after her nephew. “HEY! Sheik Al-Amin, you come back this instant!”

She heard him laugh from somewhere well past the glow of the cursed lanterns. On this side of the cavern the tunnel was not straight – it twisted and curved, kinked like a disagreeable serpent in the marshes outside her hometown. 

She could hear the pounding echo of Sheik running ahead of her, the soft pants and delighted laughs he let ring out in the should-be still-and-calm. 

She was going to throttle him when she'd caught up. What the hell did he think he was doing?! 

 

Viilinn chased him through the bowels of the caverns, past more lanterns (these ones illuminated with sickly green light) and armies of statues, strange looming men with heads like birds. Their route even passed through a promenade which was built through the center of an underground cemetery, illuminated by strange and cold shafts of white light. Altogether it felt uncomfortably sacrilegious even for the day Viilinn was having. 

 

Sheik swung around a corner in the depths of a temple. When Viilinn rounded it after him, the brat was gone from sight, and she slammed full into a statue that had had the bad manners to move out into her path. It did not feel like stone, but yielded as flesh would. The smell of it was familiar, though half-buried by the heavy scents of earth and incense that surrounded them. 

Viilinn’s back crawled when something grabbed her and caught her from the fall - when she looked, it was to the statue’s hands on her arms, steadying her. 

She caught her breath and looked; red eyes blinked at her from behind a mask, calm instead of manic. 

“Sorry.” The voice was a welcome one, slightly muffled by the visage of a crow. “You’re alright?” 

“Amin!” Viilinn gave her a rough embrace, enough that the other woman huffed - probably at having the breath squeezed out of her.  

“Your son’s down here running me ragged!” Viilinn complained, standing back to peer at her partner. “What the hell are you wearing?”   

Amin looked down; a dark cloak with wide sleeves layered with a tabard dyed the red of old blood.It was a strange costume, and one that seemed to annoy Amin not nearly as much as it did Viilinn. 

“… I… was going to ask you the same.” Amin admitted, now assessing her clothes with a look that, even only through the eyes of her mask, seemed dubious. “My son is here?” 

“He is!” Viilinn crossed her arms. “You didn't see him? He ran right past here!” He must have, though she hadn’t seen him past rounding the corner. 

Amin looked alarmed, and then unsettled. “Viilinn...” Amin reached up to cup her cheek, and Viilinn stilled.  

“That wasn't real.” Amin murmured. Viilinn looked at her strangely, but she only touched the corner of Viilinn’s eye with a finger. Instead of explaining herself, like any decent person ought to have after saying anything like that.  

“I saw him. He LAUGHED at me.” Viilinn bristled a little. “I've never heard of an illusion that could talk.” Maybe that wasn’t exactly fair, but she hadn’t. They were more for pointing at things, weren’t they? 

Amin shifted and looked around them, at the dark cavern with roots around the walls and ceiling. _Holding the cavern up, keeping the roof from caving in on us._  

But... hadn’t it already caved in on them? 

“Maybe not in Hyrule.” Amin turned in place, examining the walls as if they held answers. Viilinn thought that she was probably lending them more credit than they were due.  

“But I don't think we're there anymore.” Amin murmured, something close to wonder but closer to trepidation coloring her voice, “There is so much _magic_ here, Viilinn. Can't you feel it?” 

Viilinn blinked at her: honestly, she couldn't. 

Amin seemed to take that from her blank look. She stepped back, shifting in the strange vestments of a priest or… something like it. It was the sort of costume Viilinn had only seen in history books and horror movies. Inky black feathers cut from dark fabric, with a few real ones at the shoulders, a heavy dark cape and tabard and all belted with more deep red cloth twisted into strange ropes.  It was melodramatic, to say the least, and gold jewelry hung from Amin’s wrists and ears to complete the look. 

“Maybe there are some cultists down here after all, and they decided to play dress up.” Viilinn proposed with her lips pursed. Never mind that the rumored cultists were hylian and unlikely to have the cash, skill or connections to put something like Amin’s getup together. 

“I don't think that’s it.” Amin was still looking over her shoulder.  

“It’s probably not.” Viilinn agreed. “My phone is gone. Gun too. What about yours?” 

Amin’s voice came out curiously hesitant as she patted down her sides. “… I have a dagger.” 

“You mean a tactical knife?” They fell into step with the ease of decades together, heading deeper into the tunnel. The floor sloped down under their feet. 

“No. I mean a dagger.” Amin took it from her sash and handed it over still sheathed. It was heavy and warm, dark steel with gilding and with gems set into the crossguard and pommel. They looked real. 

“This looks like something my mother would have collected.” Viilinn muttered. “Is it genuine?” 

“The blade is inscribed with scripture. Upadesha – instructions from a spiritual leader on conducting oneself to better the spirit.” Amin turned it over to show Viilinn as much – the words meant nothing to her, but they were very beautiful. “If it's fake,” Amin said, voice even, “I want to meet the forger.” 

The ground was dusty where they walked now, and clouds puffed up under their feet. Viilinn couldn't see any footsteps in the gloam ahead of them. 

Her gut sunk a little more. “Laughing illusions, huh… why Sheik?” 

“Maybe Belial would have scared you too badly.” Amin suggested. He’d always been a bit more ill-tempered than his twin. 

“Why… did you name him that?” Viilinn asked, eyeing a statue as they passed it. A woman larger than life with the wings of a bat, sitting on a scythe like a witch mounted on a broom. Her stone gaze surveyed the hall with the airs of a queen regnant. 

“A story my mother told us as kids.” Amin’s eyes traced the shadows for things Viilinn couldn't see. “The demon Belial redeemed himself through self-sacrifice. He came to love a mortal so much he traded his life to protect them.” 

“… I just named mine after colors, you know.” Viilinn muttered, embarrassed by the comparison.  

Amin laughed. “I know.” She set a hand on Viilinn’s shoulder and squeezed. “You were never much of a scholar.” Viilinn settled a little with the touch, and didn’t respond. 

The hall opened to a cavern far vaster than the one Viilinn had arrived in, though just as empty. 

Ahead of them was a lump of rags with a lantern set beside it on the stone.As they drew nearer to it, Viilinnnoticed a hand emerging from the mass of fabric, clutching the light’s frame.

Amin jerked to stillness beside her, then deliberately loosened her body in preparation for a fight. Viilinn took the hint to do the same and looked up, searching for the cause of Amin’s distress as discretely as she could. 

It did not hide itself long; the sheikah Viilinn had mistaken for Sheik took a step out of the gloom. He came to stand in the lantern glow and watched them with his head cocked. In the pale candlelight, while he was still, Viilinn could see the differences her confusion had concealed prior. 

Sheik was a teenager with clear skin and gangly limbs that barely reached her chin. The man they faced now was grown, a scar on his mouth, red paint across his forehead and down his nose in the shape of The Eye. It was the same and different from the lookalike of Amin’s son she'd met at the bridge. 

His eyes were rimmed with dark kohl, and when he smiled again Viilinn saw why she had mistaken them. It was really all in the expression of delighted mischief. 

She passed the ritual knife back to Amin with a slow hand and let authority color her voice. “Who are you?” 

The man on the ground, she figured, was homeless. Probably squatting in the tunnels because you could live off the food people left for the dead. They'd had to send off several over the years. She’d driven more than a few to shelters in her squad car. 

The sheikah tipped his head to the side and said nothing, lips curled upward and eyes relaxed. He laid a proprietary hand on the rag-pile, inciting the person inside to raise their face and push back some of the material concealing their face. 

Viilinn glanced at Amin and reassessed her assumptions. If the man looking at them from the ground was a homeless squatter, she'd eat her shoe. 

He looked young and healthy, though worn. There was a pallor to his skin you only earned by hiding from the sun for months on end, and his hair was dirty and tangled but not matted. 

“Viilinn Rosenthal?” The man asked in a voice that sent her back crawling – he sounded like _death_.  

Viilinnrecoiled a half step, and theman of rags laced his hands around the lantern to further cage the light inside.It sent strange shadows skittering around them, dancing on the floor like fey at the hours afforded to the unseelie.  

Amin wasn’t much calmer than Viilinn, though she was likely doing better concealing it to the strangers.  

Viilinnnodded at the man’s question, and resolved not to linger on her stumble. “Officer ViilinnRosenthal.” She examined him, searching for a resemblance in his visage and coming up short. “Who are you?” _And what are you doing here, and why does he look like Amin’s son, and why do you know me?_  

The sheikah leaned down to whisper something to the rag man, putting Viilinn and Amin further on guard. The sheikah’s smile resembled Sheik’s, but the cast of the light and the dark of the cavern twisted his face into something malevolent.  

“Still an illusion?” Viilinn hissed to her friend, and got back, 

“Both of them are as real as we are.” From Amin, who was regarding them with a suspicious intelligence that well-suited the crow mask she wore.  

Delightful. Today just got better and better, didn’t it. 

The sheikah looked at them and straightened up. The man in the rags gave them a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, and continued to act as speaker. “I'm Rosenthal. This is Talib. We don't have anything to prove it...” He spread his hands, as if showcasing the unforunate unavoidability of such a thing, and said, “Sorry to meet you.” He shifted and began to stand – his knees buckled, and Viilinn tried to move forward without thinking about it.  Before she could move into their space the sheikah had grabbed and caught the man, a look of such blatant concern wiping away his devil’s grin, that Viilinn wanted to laugh. At least it would ease the tension if she did? But she managed to keep herself in silence.  

The man didn't make a sound from standing to falling, but his eyes widened in something like alarm anyway. The sheikah gently eased him the rest of the way to his feet, and shifted to support him with an arm around his middle once he was standing.  

On his feet the man was shaky, smaller than Viilinn and haggard-looking in the patchwork cloak and gown his rags formed. The sheikah beside him was a potential threat, but unless – even if - this man had a gun his own injuries would hamper him.  

Besides that they were already within twenty-one feet, Viilinn reflected. If they were to be attacked, there was no outrunning it or outshooting it. It wasn't that she wanted to be so close to possibly hostile strangers – it was that the light of the lantern only reached perhaps ten feet beyond them, and standing well and apart in the dark when there were cliffs about was equally unwise. People gave more warning than the ground, if they wanted to hurt you.  

"You are aware that the necropolis is private property?” Viilinn raised her chin. “Trespassing is banned. We're going to have to ask you to leave." 

Amin shifted beside her. Viilinn was sure she was watching both of them. The sheikah was the viable threat, but Amin would be worried about the man in the rags concealing a weapon, or making a lunge, or any other manner of desperate things, and wouldn’t take his injury at face value as Viilinn did. Which was fine and good, honestly, Viilinn liked someone that thought different to her having her back.  

The sheikah looked at the rag man, who glanced back with a sort of smile that had Viilinn's hand curling into a fist. It was something between knowing and pitying. They were the sort of expressions she’d started fights over in the past, though never on the clock. 

The sheikah turned luminous red eyes to her. "We have permission to be here, I assure you." He rasped – his voice was not fouled by illness or solitude, but neither was it chipper or pleasant. "We were sent to retrieve the both of you." 

"We work here." Rosenthal added, as if this were a reassurance instead of a blatant lie to an officer of the law. 

Viilinn watched Amin reach for her dagger. The sheikah and the man's eyes both focused on Amin's hands as well, and their shoulders tensed – but the man in rags relaxed almost immediately and turned his head away as if forcing himself to ignore the threat.  

"My name is Rosenthal." He repeated. "We've met before. Neither of you remember?" 

"I don't." Viilinn said, latching onto the words. "Why don't you tell me about that?" She didn't want a fight in an unknown location with no way to call for backup, and unknown men. Diffusing a situation would always the preferable option anyway, but here especially she wanted it. It had always been a stronger skill for Aldhard – she prayed years of cohabiting had allowed some of his ease with people to rub off on her.  

Rosenthal slanted her a look that implied he knew he was being humored, though he didn't seem to mind the knowledge. "We met here." He said, waving a hand at the place around them. "The bridge only had three lights that time. White, black, green." 

Viilinn wanted to ask how a light could be black, but she didn't. The stranger continued, "You were in the sort of rage most gods can't brag about.” His lips curled in a grin that was more tired than happy, though the light of joy lit his eyes and curved his face in a way almost alien. The sheikah beside him peered at him with an almost hungry intensity, and the man continued, “I still remember what you said.” He pitched his voice up a pointless octave that still sounded hellish, “' _It was him!_ It was him, send me back so I can kill the bastard!'” 

Viilinn did have to admit it sounded like something she would have said, if she was angry enough. But most people would. It wasn't original. " _Did_ I go back?" She asked. 

Rosenthal smiled up at her. "Perhaps we could walk and talk, ma'am?" He was leaning into the shoulder of the sheikah heavier than before, and shaking; maybe from the effort of standing. He would need to go to a hospital even if this ended peacefully, Viilinn thought. There was something wrong with his legs. "We can go ahead, if you prefer. So you know this isn't an ambush." 

Amin raised her head. "If you'd please, gentlemen." She said in her most polite voice. Viilinn felt a surge of envy each time she heard it.  

"You went back eventually." Rosenthal looked back at them to speak, relying on his companion to guide him. The sheikah was providing most of the support keeping him upright by now, so probably acting as his seeing eye dog as well was not so troublesome. He could just haul the man any which way he pleased. It seemed to Viilinn a lot of trust to put into a mercurial creature.   

Viilinn turned her head toward him and nodded. "But not immediately? Why was that?" 

The stranger – Rosenthal – lost his smile. "You were dead." He said, words measured and voice heavy. "The dead can't walk among the living." 

Amin stopped walking. "Neither of you look the part of temple keepers." She said. It took a moment for Viilinn to determine where that had even come from when it hit her – Rosenthal had claimed that they worked there in the catacombs, hadn’t he.  

"No? You do." The sheikah nodded to Amin’s costume. Amin shifted in a way that Viilinn took to mean she was very unhappy.  

Viilinndecided it'd be better if the sheikahand the man in rags didn't catch on to the same, so she was careful to keep her tone pleasant. "Are you dead, Rosenthal?" Viilinnreally meant to ask 'do you believe you're dead' but she thought some tact was probably besthere.  

"I am not living." Rosenthal responded. "And I have never lived." 

"I'm telling Aveil you said that." The sheikah at his side muttered. Rosenthal shot him a haggard look in response, but it seemed to break some tension between them, and both of their shoulders relaxed by a margin. 

"Who is Aveil?" Viilinn asked, unwilling to give up her probe for information. One never knew what would end up being useful until they saw the connections, anyway.  

Rosenthal didn't seem particularly comfortable answering. "… my wife." 

Noting the reticence, Viilinn wanted to ask more. The narrowness of Rosenthal’s eyes stopped her; he looked as if pushing would lead to him clamming up instead of breaking down, so Viilinn decided not to pursue it unless he said something else that rendered it necessary. There were more pressing matters, like the insistence that she and Amin were dead. "Since you work here, could you tell us about it?" She asked instead of _who_ and _why_ and _does she know you’re down here?_ At the corner of her gaze she could see Amin surveying the tunnel their hosts were leading them down. It wasn't a bottleneck, per say, but it didn't offer much in the way of cover either. 

"The well of souls?" Rosenthal looked up to the cavern roof as if searching for answers. "We're leaving the drain. Apollyon – the place we're going – borders the dark world. It's where Death resides. It used to be Her domain, but with its light stripped She will not return." 

… Right, it was entirely possible these two were the cultists they were called about. Maybe the tip hadn’t been off about it, and some teenagers had just been in the wrong place at the same time. Utter delight that would be. 

Amin looked at the men directly, or as well as she could through a massive bird mask. Viilinn wondered why she hadn't discarded it, honestly. It had to be a hindrance, even if she didn’t want to bare her face to strangers. 

Amin’s voice issued in a cool challenge, “I was raised to believe psychopomps were more dignified.” And, well. This was her religion they were tramping all over, Viilinn reminded herself. Bristling was normal for that, wasn’t it? 

The sheikah looked back at them, then at his companion. 

“Go ahead.” Rosenthal said, “And tell Iblis of our new arrivals.” The sheikah clicked his tongue and nudged a bit closer instead of moving until Rosenthal narrowed his eyes and added, “Go.” 

Though he looked unhappy for it, the sheikah turned and went. The three of them watched him run ahead. Amin wasn't happy, and Viilinn couldn't say she was thrilled to have him out of sight, but there it was. 

Without the sheikah supporting Rosenthal, his pace lagged. They soon had to shorten their steps so he didn't fall behind them on the path entirely. Viilinn could hear his labored breaths even from several steps away.  

“Ideally, we don't send Talib.” Rosenthal said, pulling his hood back up with a hand that Viilinn noticed was unusually thin. “But my legs don't work the best anymore, and he doesn't leave me to my own devices anyway.” 

“Hasn't he now?” Viilinn asked, and their guide shook his head.  

“He's already coming back.” He mumbled, “Blasphemy isn't a new look.” 

Right. Viilinn didn't see him, but she kept looking. “You said he's not preferred for fetching people, but he's always with you. Why did you fetch us?” She asked instead, scrutinizing what she could see. He was thin under the rags, pale from living underground, and his face was young with shadowed eyes. People who lived under high stress were hard to age with any accuracy. 

They could look older from their troubles – or younger when malnourished. He could've been anywhere from sixteen to twenty-seven, for all she knew. That was an uncomfortably wide window to guess in, and her answer would probably be wrong. 

“Your ancestor should always come to fetch you.” He responded quietly. 

… Well. Viilinn had to admit that was a new one, enough to pause her steps. “Ancestor. Tell me about – that, please, Rosenthal.” She encouraged, aware of the _Look_ Amin was shooting her. There was no harm keeping the man talking, even if what he had to say was a touch... off.  

“You won't believe me.” He said, and then, “You still don't believe you're dead. I understand.” 

Amin stopped walking. Viilinn felt ice down her back despite herself, simply because he sounded so sure of it. 

“You hardly look old enough to have kids…” Viilinn said, peering at him. “You… you must be half my age. That’s an awfully heavy job you have, isn’t it?” 

“Oh, I probably am.” Rosenthal stopped too, and leaned against the wall to rest. He slumped until he looked prepared to fuse with it. “I wasn't twenty-five when I died. But that was a very long time ago.” 

She looked to Amin, who'd recoiled a bit at the idea. Viilinn asked, “Why twenty-five?” 

Rosenthal clasped his hands in his lap, stared at her from under his hood. “Our line has a bad habit of dying young. At least you made it to forty this time… that's got to be a record.” He raised his head enough to fix her with a sad smile. 

Viilinn didn't pay much regard to the bad guess at her age, but the grief in his voice was disturbing; he sounded not only sure of his delusions, but broken down from the weight of them. 

“That might be the case… it's a rather sad thought.” Viilinn shifted her weight to one leg, “What can we do about it?” She looked to Amin – at a nod from her partner, Viilinn moved to offer Rosenthal her arm. 

Rosenthal gave her a sad smile when he took it. His fingers were cool, but his skin lacked the waxy quality of a preserved corpse or the bruised-fruit sensation of a rotting one.  

“The dead cannot walk among the living.” Rosenthal repeated. “I'm sorry. You still do not believe me – but I speak the truth. Please, let me… you had injuries before you came to this place, didn't you?” 

Viilinn almost withdrew her hand. The memory of pain coursed through her, coloring her head and back. “Yes, of course.” She focused on where their arms touched, steadied the man as well as she was able. “What about it?” 

“Is it there still?” Rosenthal asked – and he looked at Amin rather than her with sharp, lucid eyes. 

Viilinn looked, too, and recalled running into Amin in the tunnel. She hadn't thought to question it then – but she'd seen two flashes of red. 

Amin only had one eye since they were in their twenties. She passed a hand over her own face, feeling the patch over her bad eye, and she wondered.  

“Amin?” She asked quietly. Amin hadn't said a word, and had turned her head away so only the good eye was in view. “How.… how is it?” 

“… I woke up without my patch.” Amin said quietly. “I didn't think about what it meant.” 

She hadn't wanted to, was how Viilinn understood it.  

Viilinn hadn't wanted to focus on her own lack of pain – on the bridge. On the place that seemed to be carved from another reality entirely. 

She was too young to be here. She had too much left to do – and a husband to watch over, and kids to raise. 

“… no.” Viilinn said, voice steady. Steadier than she felt. “I’m not dead. Neither is Amin, Rosenthal.” 

Rosenthal gave her a soft smile, grief rimming the lines of his face. “You've been dead three days, Viilinn. They couldn't dig you out in time.” His fingers trembled on her arm, like he was talking about himself, like he was talking about someone he cared for and trying to hold things together. It was wrong, all of it wrong. “Even if they had, the injuries… you didn't starve.” 

No. “My family- I can't – I need to go back.” She felt Amin’s hand wrap in hers, a point of contact that kept her from flying into madness. Rosenthal’s grip on her other arm seemed like the kiss of hot iron, burning down to weathered bone.  

“I’m sorry.” Rosenthal repeated, and he did sound sorry. It wasn’t good enough. “You can't – reach them now. Not as things are.” 

“What the FUCK do you mean as things are?” Viilinn widened her eyes. “I've got four middle schoolers and my best friend left without me! My brothers, my mother, my friends!” 

Rosenthal released her to hold up his hands, trembling with the effort to stay on his feet. She wanted to push him away. She wanted to run. Her arm stung where she’d held him.  

“Magic is blocked from Hyrule. It's been this way for ages. We can't change it from here.” Rosenthal murmured, fingers curling. His voice came out broken. “I'm sorry.” Dropped to a whisper, “I'm so sorry.” As if that could fix anything, as if the volume changed the message. 

“If you're sorry,” Amin said, voice like ice, “Give us the silver lining. There is one, isn't there?” 

Viilinn focused on that, intent on the answer. Any answer. Some way she could take care of everything she had left behind – that she couldn't imagine leaving. There had been so much left to do, hadn’t there? 

“You can watch them.” Rosenthal offered quietly. “There is a pool in the city where you can watch the living. It will show you the ones who need you. And…” He looked toward the path Talib had taken. 

A massive tree had appeared where there had been yawning dark before, lights strung starlike in its bare canopy. 

“There is someone who can still hear your words. Maybe you'll believe him.” Rosenthal murmured. 

“Who?” Amin asked, and Rosenthal gestured to the path. Two people materialized in the gloom as if they’d been ripped from nothing, and were walking towards them. One was Talib, a deep red cloak swallowing him whole and tangling his legs like an affectionate cat. The other was a hylian with white blond hair and pale clothes. They walked, and looked, horrifically familiar to Viilinn. 

Viilinn turned her gaze back on Rosenthal. “You can't mean he's passed.” She said, voice sharp and hard and pleading that she’d misunderstood something. “ _Please_ tell me he hasn’t.” It would have been too much from one family, wouldn’t it?   

Yet, every step he took toward her shredded another doubt about his identity, that it was anyone besides her middle brother approaching her. Amin squeezed her hand. 

“He is a servant, as we are.” Rosenthal said, with his voice softened to a degree that he almost sounded gentle, instead of merely broken. 

Hell – her stupid baby brother - looked up at her and held his arms open. His face was red and miserable looking – from tears, Viilinn expected. He’d always been such a baby, and cried about everything.  

“What did I say.” Hell mumbled in lieu of a greeting. “Your heroism would take you from us, and you laughed at me.” He watched her a moment and drew in a ragged breath. “Do you regret it?” 

Viilinn remembered the scared kids she'd hauled out of the tombs, and going back to make _certain_ there was no one else inside. Tried to regret it. She wrapped Hell in her arms. “I don't- regret making sure they got home.” She mumbled. “I regret that I couldn't make sure we got home.”  

Against her chest, her brother clutched the stupid tunic she wore, muffled a sob. His voice came out broken, too loud in the dark space of the underworld.  “I can’t believe you.”

**Author's Note:**

> (Waits for the rocks to be flung at me). So I have a perfectly good reason for writing this, I promise. Back in 2017, my mom had a health scare that resulted in her being hospitalized. She actually went into a coma that they then had to keep her in to let her organs recover (several tried to fail on her). She's not even 50. She actually did survive, but the what ifs that plagued me around then led to a lot of demons, and those lend well to story telling, don't they. So (like a lot of my less happy works) this started as catharsis and it... well, it honestly helped a lot, but I shelved it and forgot about it until two years later (during the same bout of insomnia that led to me finding the almost finished Lonely Counting Sheep story.)  
> In fairness to me, this isn't a new trope, just a forced examining of it from a slightly different angle. I just. Dragged it out so we could all scream and moan at the corpse together.
> 
> Chapter 2 includes Viilinn finding out exactly why her little brother qualifies as a "servant".


End file.
